HAPPY HOOKAHS

In the cafes of Cairo these days, there is much head-wagging about the
perils of globalisation. Puffing on their hookahs, patrons mutter about the
unstoppable invasion of American fast food and trash television. Few
realise that the hookah itself is stealthily kippering the globe.

They should ask Murad Askar. Two years ago he lugged his suitcase full of
waterpipes from Egypt to California, thinking his fellow college students
might like to try a water-cooled smoke. "They went nuts," he says simply.
Mr Askar's company, Hookah Brothers, is now shifting 4,000-5,000 units a
month to clients in 47 American states. Aside from the standard smoking
gear--hollow glass bases, stainless-steel "hearts", hoses and clay
pipes--the company sells over a tonne of sticky hookah tobacco a month, in
20 flavours ranging from strawberry to mango.

It has recently branched into franchising. "We've got 50 full-service
accounts so far," says Mr Askar. "We set up a whole hookah system,
including equipment, staff training and management advice." Smokers in
Cairo, who pay about 25 cents for a charcoal-lit bowl of tobacco, may
marvel to know that one high-class joint in Boston charges $20 for the same
treat.

An Egyptian wholesaler reckons his country is exporting some 200,000 of the
gadgets a year, a four-fold increase in the decade since the only export
market was among fellow-Arabs in the region. He now has customers as far
afield as Korea and South Africa. Even at home the fashion has taken off.
Not so long ago, waterpipes were the preserve of idle working-class men.
Now Cairo's top hotels bubble to the sound of percolating smoke. And nobody
blinks at the sight of a veiled lady getting a soothing public nicotine fix.

Cairo's hookah aficionados admit that the instrument was invented in
Ottoman Turkey, but claim it was perfected in Egypt. But Egyptian ingenuity
is now being challenged. American taste runs to multiple hoses for communal
smoking of a single pipe, and safer, screw-on metal caps to cover the live
coals. Mr Askar now imports parts from Mexico and China. Jordan produces
the best smoking charcoal. Top-notch tobacco comes from Bahrain, and from a
firm in Saudi Arabia that is experimenting with what may be the hit new
flavour: Coca-Cola.